Larissa Klaassen jumped up and down with joy together with her pilot Imke Brommer after receiving her Gold Medal for the Women’s B 1,000m time trial of the Tokyo Paralympics at the Izu Velodrome yesterday.
This was Klaassen’s first Paralympic Gold Medal having already won a Silver Medal five years ago at Rio 2016 in the same event along with then pilot partner Haliegh Dolman.
A month before she even stood on the track, Klaassen already had inkling that there might be a possibility to win Gold.
“I feel that it is possible. I have a very nice pilot and we will just cycle hard,” the 27-year-old Dutch athlete said.
And cycle hard they did. Klaassen clocked in a time of 1:05.291s which secured her for the top spot on the podium but also broke the Paralympic record of 1:06.283s set by Sophie Thornhill at Rio 2016.
“We had a good start and were good out of the gate but everything went a bit wobbly and we didn’t see anything, she (Brommer) also didn’t.”
“It was not clean but the feeling was that we were going fast, really fast. In the end everything hurts and you don’t know the time but the feeling is that it’s OK,” she said after the competition.
Klaassen, who switched from gymnastics to take up para cycling after watching Dutch Kim van Dijk compete in 2012, had always dreamt of becoming a champion.
“I had never known that I would become a Paralympic champion. It was a dream but that it was possible and would happen was never in my mind. Now it’s real.”
This was the second Gold Medal for the Netherlands at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games after fellow cyclist Tristan Bangma won in the Men’s B 4,000m individual pursuit where he also broke the World and Paralympic record. (Agencies)
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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